


Seventeen days

by SharpestRose



Category: Togainu no Chi
Genre: Gen, Rin route
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-31
Updated: 2014-03-31
Packaged: 2018-01-17 16:13:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1394008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharpestRose/pseuds/SharpestRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The five years between saying goodbye and saying hello.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seventeen days

**Author's Note:**

> The name of Rin’s old gang, ぺスカコシカ, is often translated as “Pesca Corsica”. Rin’s old nickname, however, is кот (Koat) which is Russian for “tomcat”, and игра (Igra) is Russian for “game”. Using a Russian translation for ぺスカコシカ gives us песикошка (Pesikoshka) which is “dog and cat” -- which is obviously a better thematic match as a name. I’ve therefore used “Pesikoshka” as the name of Rin’s old gang, rather than “Pesca Corsica”. 
> 
> Tomoyuki’s Pesikoshka-era hair can be seen in the PS2 adaptation of the game, or here: http://sharpestrose.tumblr.com/post/78061805323/tomoyukis-flashback-hair-makes-me-think-that-his 
> 
> The reference to Rin being offered a job is from one of the Togainu no Chi manga adaptations, and I recommend it to everyone -- it has a lot of great characterisation of all the characters, and lovely art. The panels in question are here: http://sharpestrose.tumblr.com/post/81066830221

 

**Day one**

When Shiki’s blade bites into the muscle of Rin’s thigh, higher than the sore and slowly-healing gash Akira left there so recently, the wound is so deep that it’s an emotion as much as it is a sensation: horror and shock, with grief following a moment later.

He’s going to die. After all the other things that Shiki’s stolen from him, Rin doesn’t even feel surprised that Shiki should take this too. It’s just a pity that it had to happen now, instead of such a short time ago when it wouldn’t have mattered at all.

“Stay down,” Shiki demands in the same flat, cool tone that he’s always used to speak to Rin. No affection, no softness. Not even contempt, because that would suggest he considered Rin worthy of his disdain.

It’s only when Shiki tells him not to rise again that Rin even notices he’s fallen to the ground, his hands instinctively clutching at the red mess of the fatal slice to his leg, sword useless beside him.

“Sniveling dogs belong on the ground. Learn your place.”

He turns and leaves. Rin tries to shout, to say something, anything, to spit a final parting venom at Shiki’s back as he leaves Rin alone to die in the rain. The clouds blanket the sky overhead. He can’t even stare up at the stars until it’s over.

“Kazui, I’ll…” Rin starts to say to himself, but the sentimental words stick in his throat.

He loved Kazui with a love that was big enough to die for. Revenge kept him moving, forced him to eat and breathe and speak through days when he would have gladly lain down and never moved again.

And then, out of nowhere, Akira gave him something to live for.

Rin would have liked to see what that was like. To think about the future for a change, instead of being a remnant of his own past.

The cut on his leg is pulsing thick and red between his fingers. He’s going to faint soon. He’s going to die soon.

But he isn’t dead yet.  

Shiki’s destruction always leaves Rin with just enough life remaining to properly despair. It’s one of those little touches that marks Shiki out as cruel rather than simply callous.

Rin’s bloodied fingers are clumsy and half-numb as he scrabbles to unfasten the collar around his neck, buckling it above the wound instead. It’s an imperfect tourniquet, but with any luck it’ll be enough to keep him alive just a little longer. Rin would like to think he’s due for a bit of luck right about now.

With Akira and Motomi both gone from the city, he has precious few friendly options for where to go.

He’ll just have to hope that being someone’s familiar enemy is enough reason for them to help him.

 

 

**Day ninety**

After the delirious part’s over, and the feverish part that was too much deja vu too fast (and no Akira this time with gentle patient care, just Tomoyuki and his fake new gang and their never-strong-enough antibiotics and painkillers) and the worst part where the world fell away and there was nothing but nightmares and the shadowed figure of Shiki looming over him as Rin thrashed and screamed and begged to die…

after all of that, when the lapses into half-consciousness are taking up less and less of his time each day and he’s starting to be able to sit up against the pillows behind him, the first thing Rin asks for is his camera.

“No.”

Rin scowls up at the towering figure beside him, hating how small being on a mattress on the floor makes him feel. “What? Give it to me!”

Tomoyuki’s eyes narrow, but he just shakes his head again. “No. You’ll peel the bandages off to try to get a photo of it.”

“So what? It’s my leg. What’s left of it.”

“That doctor cost a fortune in tags, _and_ we had to reveal the location of this place to an outsider so he could come operate on you. I’m not throwing out all that so you can die because the wound went septic again after you decided you wanted to photograph gore.”

Rin doesn’t know how to explain that it isn’t just a case of wanting to photograph gore. He wants to look at the place where his leg used to be, at the ragged horrible lack where bone and muscle and skin were sawn away. If he can look at it through his lens and take a picture, it all might start feeling real and not so much like a nightmare.

He doesn’t know how to say any of that, though, so instead he looks around at the small room that stinks like three months of not-quite-dying. “What is this place, anyway? That same old movie theatre you were hiding out in?”

“An ice-skating rink,” Tomoyuki tells him. “It’s a good spot. Lots of offices -- like this one -- and a big central space. No natural light. Nobody much bothers with it. Looks like shit from outside.”

“You always liked the places people used to gather at for fun,” Rin says, remembering. Those times in Pesikoshka seem like they were centuries ago. “Cinemas and ice rinks and karaoke bars and swimming pools.”

“While all you ever wanted was the stars,” Tomoyuki agrees quietly.

“So how’s the war going?” Rin asks, desperate for a change in topic. Swapping nostalgia with Tomoyuki is going to lead to Tomoyuki remembering how much he hates Rin, and Rin’s nowhere near well enough to survive on his own yet.

Tomoyuki shrugs. “Air raids are just one more way to die. Not much else has changed so far. People still fight for tags. The drug trade’s still there. It’s getting harder to get out; the guards who took bribes at the start are mostly gone by now, and the new ones are harder to get past. People talk about secret tunnels, but I’ve never met anyone who’s actually seen or used one. Hikaru got some papers that supposedly belonged to an aid worker from Nikkouren. We’re going to forge duplicates and use those to get out, once you’re strong enough to move.”

“You’re including me?”

Tomoyuki gives him a hard glare, breathing out an angry sigh. “I’m sick of everyone fucking dying. I wouldn’t have bothered to help you when you turned up half-dead and bleeding, otherwise. We’re all going to get out of this shithole once and for all.”

Rin looks away. There’s nothing much else in the room for his gaze to rest on, except the single bump in the blanket that his one remaining foot makes. “I can’t leave yet,” he mutters, mutinous.

“What the fuck?”

“Where’s the sword I had with me? You’ve still got it, right?”

Tomoyuki kicks the edge of the mattress, the movement jolting Rin’s injury and making him hiss in pain. “How much fucking leeway do you think the universe has left for you, you piece of shit? If it hadn’t been for us you’d be dead now. Your brother isn’t going to give you any more chances.”

Rin’s blood drains from his face so fast that the cold feels like a shock. “What did you say.” His voice is too flat to come out as a question.

“You talked when you were delirious,” Tomoyuki answers, too angry to be contrite. “Things I didn’t understand before make more sense now.”

That startles a bitter laugh out of Rin. “Maybe you can explain it then. None of it’s ever made sense to me.”

“Yeah, you kept asking him that. Just before we had to get the doctor, and just after. You kept asking Shiki why he hasn’t killed you.” Tomoyuki snorts in derision. “He hasn’t killed you because he _doesn’t want you to die_ , you idiot. But how fucking far do you expect to be able to push that?”

Not so long ago, Rin knew the answer to that. He was gonna push it until it broke, until either Shiki died or he did.

Now he’s got nothing except a promise made to someone he might never see again. He doesn’t have any answers anymore. He doesn’t even have two legs, or his camera, or his knives, or his sword.

“I don’t know,” he tells Tomoyuki honestly. “I don’t know anything.”

Tomoyuki gives him a smirk. “Welcome to the club.”

 

**Day two hundred and four**

He has to learn how to move all over again. The muscle tone’s gone from his leg and his arms, and his centre of gravity and his balance are different now -- twice different, depending on if he’s got the prosthetic on or not.

One more expensive debt to Tomoyuki that he’ll never be able to repay.

With agonising slowness his body starts to feel like his again, a body that can swing and jump, quick and clever in small spaces or at dangerous heights.

He doesn’t wear shorts anymore. He needs clothes that hide his weakness. Nobody can know. If he could take back all the secrets that this new fake Pesikoshka know about him, he’d make it so that even they didn’t know about his leg.

Except maybe Tomoyuki. Rin doesn’t mind so much if Tomoyuki knows.

He thinks Akira would be proud of him for that, for letting someone know his vulnerability.

 

 

**Day two hundred and thirty**

Meal of Duty is open for business again now, because it takes more than a few bloodstains and bad memories to drive away residents of Toshima. When Rin’s confident that his gait is as natural as it’s ever going to be (Shiki would be able to tell the difference, in an instant, if he saw... but hopefully nobody else can), it’s to Meal of Duty that he goes.

“Remember how you once offered me a job?” he asks Master, once they’ve exchanged I’m-glad-to-see-you-aren’t-dead greetings, which is what passes for friendly acquaintance in the lives they lead.

Master gives him a concerned look, like Rin just told him that Rin was thinking of getting a job in insurance or accounting.

“Working in a bar isn’t exactly settling down with a mortgage,” Rin points out dryly.

“Compared to Igra, it is.”

“So maybe I’m ready to settle down and get a mortgage, then.”

All that matters is getting his strength and speed back to a level where it’s feasible to find and challenge Shiki again. Rin doesn’t care about anything else. But he’s got a debt to repay to Tomoyuki and the stupid fake gang, and he’s going to pay off as much of it as he can before they use their documents to get out of the city and beyond his reach.

Working at the bar’s not so bad. There aren’t as many familiar faces as there used to be -- a lot of people have left Toshima, or died trying, or died from the air raids, or died in Igra, or just plain old died for no good reason -- but there are a few, and Rin’s good at learning the names and faces of the newcomers quickly.

He learns to make the house special, on sale for those who’d rather brave the unknown than eat another Solid. The recipe is essentially “whatever’s in the cans and boxes that it’s easiest to get to in the store room”, but usually includes a combination of: one can of kidney beans, one can of tomato pieces, a handful of brown lentils, a handful of spices, water, a few hours in the pot, and then red lentils and instant potato mash powder thrown in near the end.

It’s the costliest dish in the place, and often Tomoyuki will come by when Rin’s working and get a bowl of it on Rin’s tab. As repayment for saving his life goes, Rin isn’t sure that a few servings of bean stew goes very far, but it’s more than he ever had the chance to give Akira, and Tomoyuki seems to like it well enough.

Rin’s helping Master make a new pot of it one evening when he asks, “What are you going to do when the cans run out?”

“I dunno. Never thought about it. What’d they do in other sieges?”

Rin scrapes up what little he recalls of his history classes at school. “Famine. Cannibalism.”

“Well, shit, we weren’t too fucking far away from that here even before the borders closed.”

Rin snickers. “That’s just because the alternative was your bean pot.”

Master tries to smack him across the knuckles with the hot, stew-covered spoon, but Rin’s too fast for him and dodges the attack easily with a laugh.

 

 

**Day three hundred and sixty five**

The stars are bright and clear on the first anniversary of the last time Rin saw Akira.

He doesn’t know if Tomoyuki knows it’s exactly a year since Rin got hurt. Neither of them mention it. They’re up on the roof of one of the few remaining high buildings in this part of town, watching the sky.

There hasn’t been an air raid for almost a week. Rin doesn’t know if that’s a good sign or a bad one.

“Il Re’s been sighted twice this month. Or, at least, people _say_ they’ve seen him,” Tomoyuki says, like he knows there’s no point in keeping the information from Rin for his own good. Rin will find out one way or another. He always does.

“Is he really Il Re, though, if nobody’s bothering with Igra much anymore?” Rin muses. “Maybe he’s just himself now.”

“I don’t get it. I don’t get why he’s… why you can’t just let it go,” Tomoyuki says, sounding sad.

Pesikoshka left the city with their forged papers. Tomoyuki didn’t go with them. Rin tried to ask about it, but they just wound up arguing about something stupid. He can’t even remember what it was. He hasn’t tried asking again.

“Akira…” Rin searches for how to explain. The cold indifference of the stars helps him collect his thoughts. “He gave up his story for mine. Whatever path he was on, he gave it up to be on mine with me. He threw away the chance to find answers for himself. I don’t know how I can ever repay that except by seeing my own story to the end.”

 

 

**Day four hundred and fifty-two**

Illness overtakes bombings as the major war-related cause of death. Meal of Duty stays open, its clientele braving the risk of infection. Rin wonders if anything would keep them away, if massacres and disease won’t do the trick.

Not that he wants them to go. Having a routine, hard work to do, is all that gets him through some days. When there’s work he doesn’t have to think.

Rin misses Akira so much that it makes the phantom pain of his leg seem like nothing. What’s one leg, to the phantom pain of a whole person being absent?

He and Tomoyuki are scoping out new places to stay -- finding a building that isn’t on the verge of collapse is getting increasingly difficult -- one afternoon, when they see two figures approaching them from several blocks away.

Running into other people out in the open during the day is by no means a rare occurrence, even now, but these two are distinctly out of the ordinary even from a distance.

The one on its hands and knees is familiar, even after so long since Rin last saw it. Arbitro’s ‘dog’, with its limp hair gone prematurely silver and scarred, pierced, skinny body. Its clothing is still black leather, but the elaborate straps are mostly gone.

“Tomoyuki,” Rin says, warning for them to be on-guard as the pair approaches.

The smaller of the two -- standing taller on two feet than the dog is on four, but clearly younger and even more slightly built than their slim companion -- seems unharmed, under the dirt and scratches and stains. Rin thinks they’re probably a teenage girl, judging by the limp remnant of a ribbon at the end of the plait hanging down their back, but he spent enough years of being mistaken for one himself not to jump to the conclusion.

“I’m Yukari. He doesn’t have a name,” she says, confirming the suspicion. One of her hands rests on the shoulder of Arbitro’s dog, the other tucked into the pocket of her jeans with studied carelessness. She’s got a small switchblade in there, Rin guesses, or maybe a throwing weapon of some kind. “He says you smell safe.”

Her voice is very quiet, not much more than a whisper. Rin knows as well as any Igra player that the dog’s nose is hypersensitive, but he never thought to wonder one way or the other about its hearing. Maybe loud sounds hurt it. Or maybe the girl, Yukari, is just naturally soft-spoken.

Actually, on that subject…

“He ‘says’?” Rin asks, skeptical, glancing down at the dog. Its blinded eyes are covered, same as all the times in the past that Rin saw it, but the bit that used to be in its mouth is gone.

“I learned to read his lips,” she explains. “He doesn’t know so many words, but I’m teaching him. Anyway, that doesn’t matter. We’re hungry. Can you help us?”

Meal of Duty has a back entrance, thank goodness. Rin doesn’t even want to think about what a commotion it would cause for Arbitro’s dog to show up out of the blue after more than a year of being out of sight.

Rin had known, vaguely, that the slave trade had quietly carried on even after Igra withered and died under the weight of the war, but he’d never given any thought to whether Arbitro and his cronies were still within city limits.

Like so much else, it all belongs to a different world, one that had happened eons and eons ago. Rin’s life feels, sometimes, like it should be measured by the same scale as that of the stars. To compress it all down into an ordinary span of time seems laughable.

He’d known about the stuff that was going on, back in the old days. Everyone had known; the chance to own a slave was the reason that a small but significant portion of Igra players had come to Toshima in the first place.

Rin had been callous about it, like he was callous about every life and its suffering; jaded against the whole world as he hurtled to his own destruction.

And then there had been Akira. In the calm, methodical way Akira had of doing things, he’d broken down the shell inside Rin.

Now that those brittle defenses are gone, Rin has no choice but to give a shit. About himself, and about everybody else.

He looks at Arbitro’s dog as it eats bean stew from a bowl on the floor, and remembers the flippant, careless remarks he’d made about Arbitro’s hobbies, remembers seeing the busted-up losers and addicts crumpled in gutters and commenting “he’ll get snatched for a slave before morning, for sure” before walking on, not even pausing in his stride.

Rin doesn’t feel ashamed at himself. Instead, he just feels vague sickness, vague sadness. There’s no point in having pity for Arbitro’s dog, any more than there would be in having shame about being flippant in those earlier moments. The only thing that can matter now is what Rin does to help.

Under the grime, Yukari is delicately pretty up-close, with the same kind of fragile loveliness that Akira and Kazui had both had, as if some people were built from finer materials than everyone else.

It’s completely different looking at Yukari to how it was looking at Akira or Kazui, of course, but Rin’s willing to bet a whole shoebox full of useless old tags that her youth and vulnerability wouldn’t have made her sexless in Arbitro’s eyes -- if they’d factored in at all, they would have heightened her appeal to the guy, not lessened it.

Ugh. Rin shudders.

“My mother died at a rehab camp,” Yukari recounts between mouthfuls of stew. “My brother left me with our dad, and came here to fight. He -” she points to Arbitro’s dog “- says my brother’s dead. I didn’t know that until I got here. My dad killed himself, so I came looking for my brother. There are ways in and out of the city if you know who to ask.”

It’s a variation on the same story that Rin’s heard thousands of times from patrons in the bar, from people he knew when Igra was in full swing. Everyone has ghosts walking with them.

Arbitro’s dog leaves its food and comes over to where Yukari sits perched on a stool, butting its head against her knee. She climbs down and kneels on the ground in front of it, bringing their faces close together and watching as its lips move in soundless whispers.

“He says that his master wanted a mate for him. There were lots of…” her voice shifts tone as she stops relaying the dog’s words and speaks to it herself. “No, it’s okay. I can tell it, you don’t have to protect me.” She glances up at Rin and Tomoyuki and then resumes recounting, her words slow and with long pauses between. “There have been lots and lots of others but they were always kept… somewhere apart. When his master drugged me, I was left with him. To see if... I smelled all right to him. He made it seem like… he wanted to stay with me in the room all night.”

Yukari pauses again, stroking the dog’s hair in small soothing pats, trying to quell its shaking.

“He says he knew how to make his master be indulgent, so he was allowed to stay. He didn’t want… he doesn’t… he doesn’t want revenge. Because he’s stupid! You’re _stupid_ ,” she says to the dog before glancing up at them again. Her eyes are shiny with unshed tears. “He’s stupid. He doesn’t want revenge. He just doesn’t want it to happen to anyone else.”

She scrubs the hem of her sleeve across her eyes and sniffs. “I wanted him to be my brother. I miss my brother. I want a new one. But he always says he can’t be a brother because he’s just a dog sculpture. Because he’s _stupid_.”

Rin suddenly realises, with another heavy sick feeling, that he’s been thinking _it_ about this boy. Thinking of him as a dog, not as a person.

He swallows down his self-disgust and clears his throat. “We need a name to call you.”

Yukari and the boy confer in their private lip-reading and whispering language for a moment. “He says he can’t remember. He isn’t sure he ever had one.”

“Well…” Rin glances at Tomoyuki for a second. “It’s not as different from ‘dog’ as you might be looking for, since it means ‘tomcat’. But if you like, you can be Koat. The person… the one who had it before was very happy, when he went by it. Maybe it’s got good luck.”

 

 

**Day four hundred and ninety**

Nightmares are nothing new for Rin, but since Yukari and Koat started sleeping in the same apartment that he and Tomoyuki are using, the subject matter of Rin’s dreams has shifted.

His nightmares are about Akira. It’s the most vivid that Akira’s face has been in Rin’s mind for a long time; his heart remembers better than his head. But the dreams aren’t welcome reminders. They aren’t happy or heartfelt.

They’re dreams of Shiki’s world, Il Re’s world, where bodies and lives are prizes to be won and traded. He dreams of Akira held captive, dependent as a pet, mind and body as broken and ruined as Koat’s had been when he was Arbitro’s.

When Rin wakes up from those dreams, he has to fight down the vomit that rises in his throat.

He climbs to the roof of their building and stares up at the stars, and wonders what Akira dreams about.

 

 

**Day seven hundred and fifty-one**

The war ends. The casualties in Toshima are catastrophic. The city is declared a no-man’s land. Everyone is ordered to evacuate to refugee centres being set up around the perimeter.

Yukari cries. “There isn’t anything out there. I don’t want to go. I want to stay here.”

She clutches one of her books to her chest, a battered hardcover with pages warped and wavy from rain damage. She has a collection of them, stacked in the corner by her bed. She likes to read them aloud to Koat.

Rin sometimes teases her about that, saying that it’s cruel and unusual punishment to make Koat listen to _Anne of Green Gables_ and _Taketori Monogatari_ and _A Little Princess_ so often. But Koat never seems to mind the choice of subject matter, curling up beside her as she reads out the stories of princesses and lucky orphans.

“We don’t have to go,” Rin promises her. “Some people will stay. Some people always stay. There’s always life in a place if you know where to look for it.”

He can’t leave yet. There are still sightings of Shiki. Even now, he’s still here. So Rin can’t leave.  

As long as Shiki’s alive, Rin’s stuck in limbo.

 

 

**Day nine hundred and six**

On Kazui’s birthday, Rin watches the stars, and he and Tomoyuki talk about Pesikoshka, and get into an argument.

“I’m never going to be as important as your ghosts, am I?” Tomoyuki asks, more sad than annoyed. “I’m always going to be second best to the memories of those assholes.”

“What?”

Tomoyuki looks even angrier. “You don’t even know what I mean, do you? You don’t even…” He shakes his head with a weary laugh. “I cut my hair like his once. I was like one of the girls in Yukari’s storybooks. I thought if I… but even then, you never looked my way. You only had eyes for him. And when he was dead and gone, you found a carbon copy of him and--”

Rin’s knuckles, out of practice at throwing a punch, sting with impact against Tomoyuki’s cheekbone.

Tomoyuki staggers back, his eyes wide in surprise, and then surges forward and his lips are on Rin’s, soft and warm and pliant, and Rin groans and opens to the taste of them instinctively because it’s been so long, he didn’t even realise how much he was missing touching someone, having someone touch him.

Then Tomoyuki steps back, posture stiff and expression closed-off, unreadable. He stares at Rin for one breath, then another, and then turns and leaves the roof.

Tomoyuki’s things are gone from the place beside his mattress when Rin goes back to the apartment.

Rin wishes he could be like Akira, and set his own story aside for Tomoyuki’s sake. But he doesn’t have it in him. Akira was a good man; Rin’s just pretending to be one in honour of a promise.

 

 

**Day one thousand and seventy**

It’s not until Yukari points it out to him that Rin notices that he’s been limping lately. It’s time to replace the prosthetic again. It’s funny to think about how tall he’s getting. He wonders how tall he’d be beside Shiki, these days.

Koat and Yukari help in the kitchen more often now. Koat’s excellent sense of smell gives him a natural aptitude for cooking, and Yukari helps him with anything his blindness or inability to talk might make difficult.

Whenever one of the patrons compliments the quality of their meal, Rin makes sure to pass along the praise to Meal of Duty’s cook. Koat’s gaunt face, always so pale and pallid, flushes with pride at the words. He’s even learning to give small, twitchy smiles in reply.

One day Rin walks past a mirror and pauses, checking that his stride is even with the new prosthetic. For the first time, the shades and styles of the clothing he’s chosen become apparent to him -- the orange of his shirt, the shearling of his coat. Without meaning to, he’s started to mimic the way Akira looks in his memory.

It makes him laugh. Apparently, when he'd decided that he wanted to become a good man, his subconsciousness had decided on a very specific good man that he should become.

 

 

**Day one thousand, two hundred and nine**

“A bowl of the bean stew. Put it on his tab.”

Rin’s head jerks around at the sound of the order, given to the other bartender on duty.  

Tomoyuki’s taller, and more tanned.

“Is that right, does he go on your tab?” the other bartender asks. Then he notices Rin’s expression. “Are you all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

The irony of the comment puts a crooked smile on Tomoyuki’s mouth. “I’m not one of his ghosts, no.”

“He goes on my tab, yeah,” Rin tells the other bartender, giving Tomoyuki a tired, pleased smile of his own. “Always.”

 

 

**Day one thousand, two hundred and forty-five**

“...his sword was running blood to the hilt, and himself so swelled with triumph and fallen into so fine an attitude, that he looked to be invincible. Right before him on the floor was Mr. Shuan, on his hands and knees; the blood was pouring from his mouth, and he was sinking slowly lower, with a terrible, white face --”

“Your books are _stupid_ ,” Yukari complains for at least the twentieth time, as Tomoyuki reads from the scuffed paperback and Koat listens in rapt attention.

“If I had to listen to one more story about a plucky young girl being adopted by kindly benefactors, I’d stab myself in my ears to stop the misery,” Tomoyuki tells her, switching his copy of _Kidnapped_ to his other hand, reaching out to pet Koat’s hair.

Rin makes a face at the sight of the gesture. He hates it when people treat Koat like a dog.

Tomoyuki catches sight of Rin’s expression and scowls at him. “Don’t be an ass. Just because you don’t believe in touching anybody anymore doesn’t mean other humans aren’t allowed to want contact. There was a time when you used to be the king of random hugs and pettings.”

Rin blinks in surprise. It’s true. Even after Kazui died, and his whole world turned grey and loveless, he’d still been known for his easy physicality. He’d been all over Akira and Keisuke, right from the first moment they’d met.

He hadn’t realised how much he’d changed from that, but he has. Ever since he lost his leg, he’s been determined not to let anyone underestimate him. He used to encourage misconceptions -- the weaker people expected him to be, the more of an advantage he had over them in a fight -- but now that there’s a real reason for them to think of him as weak, he can’t stand the thought of it.

That night, Tomoyuki joins him up on the roof, sitting a few feet away from him. With a deep breath for courage, Rin edges closer, enough that Tomoyuki can reach over and ruffle his hair, messing it up.

Rin laughs, ducking away from the touch when it becomes too much. It’ll take a while before he’s easy with it.

“We’re okay?” he asks.

“Nah,” Tomoyuki answers with a wry grin. “We’re a mess. But what else is new?”

Rin pats at his own hair, trying to smooth it down again.

“You need a haircut.”

That makes Rin snort. “Like you’re one to talk.” Tomoyuki’s hair is a long flame-orange fall down his back, uncut since the Pesikoshka days.

“Maybe we should all get haircuts,” Tomoyuki concedes. “A fresh start.”

 

 

**Day one thousand, two hundred and forty-six**

When Yukari declares his haircut finished, Rin looks at his reflection.

The sight of Shiki’s features in his own face, more obvious now than ever before, makes Rin’s blood go cold. He forces a smile, and thanks Yukari for her help, and that night the dreams are so terrible he wakes up sobbing.

 

 

**Day one thousand, three hundred and eleven**

For the first time in years, Rin’s fighting skills are back to lethal sharpness.

He isn’t sleeping well.

 

 

**Day one thousand, four hundred**

When Rin raises the idea of leaving Toshima someday, Yukari shakes her head emphatically. “They’ll separate us when we’re relocated. We’ll never see each other again.”

She looks exhausted, and confused that he’d even offer the suggestion.  

Even though she’d hate to be thought of as a child, that’s what Rin sees when he looks at her. He see the child she’d been when they first met, and the child he’d been once upon a time, and all the other children who don’t have any way of making sense out of the loss and displacement they endure over and over again.

That exhausted, confused look on the faces of kids like Yukari is what built Bl@ster.

She’s scared to wind up just another lost soul in a world already overflowing with them, destroying shit as a way to feel alive.

“No, it isn’t like before,” Rin assures her with as much confidence as he can find. “They don’t separate families now. You’ll have Koat and Tomoyuki with you, I promise.”

If Yukari notices that he didn’t include himself in the promise, she doesn’t mention it.

 

 

**Day one thousand, five hundred, and sixty-six**

Before Shiki can get back up off the pavement and move out of range of Rin’s attack, Rin strikes the sword down hard, hearing the vicious wet crunch of impact as much as feeling it.

The blade is sharp and it cuts down deep on first swing, and Rin only has to add a little more pressure, draw it back and forth a small amount, before it cuts through and he feels it meet the hardness of the pavement below.

They’re both bloodied, breathing hard and soaked from the sudden downpour that caught them as they faced off. It’s so much like that day years ago that Rin almost wants to laugh.

But so much is different now, as well. Rin’s different.

And now Shiki’s different, too. Il Re, mythic phantom of Igra, no longer has a sword arm.

“You’re dead,” Rin tells the man beneath him. The words are so small in his mouth, worn smooth from years and years of waiting to be said. “Shiki. Il Re. Everyone you used to be is dead now. I’ve killed him. That’s what I’m going to tell everyone: that I killed you here, out in the rain.”

Shiki stares up at him, as unreadable as ever, no sign of the incredible pain he must be in showing on his features. After a beat of silence, he smirks at Rin.

“Can’t bring yourself to kill me for real, little cat?”

“Didn’t you hear me? I have. You’re dead. And now you have one chance to begin again. Only one. As repayment for the chances you gave me. But if I ever see you again, the thing I cut off will be your head,” Rin snaps. The rain feels warm against his skin. “I learned my place. Now learn yours. Find a better man to become.”

Shiki’s sword feels like the weight of the whole of his life so far as he slings it over his shoulder, centuries and eons of loss and doubt folded into the sharpened metal.

Rin doesn’t turn around as he walks away, his gait absolutely even and his stride strong despite the weight.

 

 

**Day one thousand, seven hundred and forty**

There’s only one processing camp left at the borders of the no-man’s-land zone. The government must assume that everyone still inside Tokyo is planning to stay there permanently. Or that they’re all dead by now.

The guard looks extremely skeptical when Rin tells him that the four of them are related, but without any kind of identification one way or the other there’s no way to prove that the claim isn’t true.

They get put in the same lodging together, a trailer-mounted holiday home that someone decided to repurpose as a temporary place to keep refugees.

There’s a whole line of them, the rest sitting empty and dark. It’s a weird sight, homely and uncanny at once, and Rin takes out his camera a snaps a photograph of it in the fading evening light.

He has a whole stack of pictures saved up. Places and people and moments, a pile of books left beside a bed and outgrown legs and rooftops and so many other things.

Rin can’t wait to show Akira. To tell him about all the things that happened.

Tomoyuki comes to stand beside him, looking at the row of trailers and then up at the vastness of the night sky overhead. He breathes out a deep sigh.

“You’re going to go looking for the ghost.” It’s not a question, but Rin nods anyway.

“Yeah.”

“Well, when you find him, you come find us again.” Tomoyuki reaches up and ruffles Rin’s hair.  “Drop in and say hello. Koat and Yukari can make us all a meal.”

The thought makes Rin smile. “Imagine if I told Akira that I was taking him to dinner at his in-laws’.”

Tomoyuki snorts. “You’ll give the poor guy a heart attack, you little brat.”

“Little? I’m taller than you are.” Rin knocks his shoulder against Tomoyuki’s. “We’ll have bean stew together once a week.” He looks up at the sky again, his smile getting even wider. “It’s a promise”  

 

 


End file.
